PLACES OF INTEREST
COLOMBARIUM OF MONTE DEL FRATE
Was it a dovecote or a burial ground in Roman times? A deep cave, with two big entrances and many little man-made niches, the columbarium of Monte del Frate facing the Setta river, is visible from the road connecting Badolo and Brento. Although no artifacts or historical documentation permit accurate dating, most scholars have attributed these tiny cells to Ancient Roman funerary architecture, referring to similar examples especially in Latium and Tuscany. These structures, with their rows of niches, could have been used by the Romans to store the ashes of the cremated. Without proof, however, another less imaginative hypothesis has been set forth: that it was simply a structure created for raising pigeons.
PARK G.MARCONI
Peer into the future by standing on the shoulders of the past in a fun science park, playing with optical illusions, image distortion and sound propagation based on the experiments of Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi’s genius is celebrated both along the diagonal pathway (linking the Park to the sculpture donated by Francesco Martani called “Dialogue”) and in the three little, paved circles representing the dot-dot-dot of the Morse code’s “S.” The “World of Marconi” on a 6x4 meter platform displays a map of the world showing the location of Marconi’s key experiments.
THE BRIDGE OF VIZZANO
The bridge of Vizzano owes its existence to the request of a schoolteacher for a way for her pupils to cross the Reno river and get to school even when the weather was bad. Work on the bridge began in 1926. Before its construction, the only way to cross from one bank to the other was thanks to the “passatori,” or ferrymen, who carried people and goods back and forth across the easiest parts of the river. Before the bridge was built, in fact, the village of Vizzano was known as “Barca,” which means boat. The first structure, made of reinforced concrete on pylons, could not hold up to the force of an exceptional flood in1928. In 1930 a second version was inaugurated, this time a suspension bridge attached to pylons anchored to the ground. During WWII, in April of 1943, the retreating Germans dynamited it to hinder the advance of the Allies, who arrived in Bologna only four days later. Nowadays even cars can cross Vizzano Bridge, restructured in 1994, but it still remains a quaint, narrow and somewhat wobbly passageway over the river.
THE ICE HOUSE
The Ice House (also called “the pantry”) is located in Grimaldi Park, in the heart of Sasso Marconi. Documented on a map dating from 1697, flanked by a grocers and a butchers, its primary function was to preserve food: meat, sausage, cheese, butter and other dairy products, by keeping them cold. The structure of the ice house, which is accessed through a small door, is composed of a deep, reversed truncated cone-shaped hole dug into the earth, covered with a semi-spherical dome. The inside walls were tiled with very thick stones cemented together, which allowed the temperature to remain constant. The top part was covered with soil and thick vegetation, contributing to maintaining internal coolness. In the winter, the farmers would collect snow from the fields, transport it and dump it into the ice house. There it was pressed into compact blocks of ice, which kept the space cool throughout the year. As the ice melted, the water collected on the flat bottom of the structure and was filtered into the ground through a metal grate.
THE ROCK
Glosina Rock, as it was called according to medieval documents, is rich in historical and symbolic significance. An aura of mystery and magic has always surrounded it and the locals have always attributed to it a dark and wicked spirit. One of the oldest superstitions claims that it is inhabited by the devil himself, giving rise to the nearby Gemese Stream's nickname, Devil’s Ditch. The Cliff was even the setting for one the stories narrated in the “Chronicles” of Salimbene, a 13th century itinerant Franciscan monk, in which the devil kills two novices, pushing one into the river and smashing the other’s head with a rock. But the real history of the Cliff begins in1283, when a church, founded by Giovanni da Panico and dedicated to the Virgin Mary, flanked by a pilgrims’ haven, was built into it. The terracotta image of the Madonna and Child became an attraction for many worshippers, with the faithful flocking to it in numbers equal to Saint Luke’s sanctuary in Bologna. In 1477, Nicolò Sanuti, the Count of Porretta who had his residence in the nearby village of Fontana (see Sanuti Palace), ordered the excavation of another, larger cave to house the church. In January 1787, however, an enormous chunk of rock broke off and fell from the ceiling, luckily without any serious consequences. To avoid further risks of this nature, the Sanctuary and the shrine of the Madonna were moved to the village of Sasso, housed first in a chapel and later in the church built in the main square between 1802 and 1831, which was then destroyed during a bombing raid in the Second World War, along with the 15th century shrine. The Cliff has also been used to extract sandstone for the Bolognese building industry. Vast holes in the rock are still visible today, along with chisel marks and some graffiti carved into the cliff face by the quarrymen. A fall in demand for sandstone, however, around the turn of the 19th century reduced the local population to poverty, forcing the poorest among them to make their homes in these caves. But on the night of the Feast of Saint John, June 24, 1892, an enormous slab of rock collapsed, killing 14 people and injuring another 10.
ROMAN AQUEDUCT
This Roman aqueduct is a record-holder: more than 2000 years old, it is the only one still perfectly functioning and to this day it brings water from the Setta River into about one fifth of Bolognese homes. Since the waters of the Aposa River, the only one running through the center of Bologna, were deemed insufficient, and those of the Reno too hard, Roman hydraulic engineers decided to bring in the clear, fresh, sweet waters of the Setta. Around the year 15 B.C. they planned a tunnel dug into the sandstone and clay hills along the right bank of the river, just before it runs into the Reno. Almost 19 km long, it took 20 teams to build it, each made up of dozens of men, working in shifts, over what was probably a period of 12 years. The aqueduct was built in sections. Each section was dug by two teams going down the same hole, then digging in opposite directions for about 80 m until they met the team who had started further up or further down the line. It remained in use until the 4th century A.D., when the Barbaric invasions led to the fall of the Roman Empire in the west.